Don't forget that the 8800M GTX actually did go through a die shrink when it became the GTX 260M. That's actually a sensible approach when moving to a new process, and while it didn't do much for performance it was a lot more than a straight rebadging. So really, 8800M GTX became 9800M GT, and that's basically the same as what NVIDIA has done with the GT 630M vs. GT 540M -- a drop in model number positioning in the new series. AMD is basically doing the same thing here with the 7600M vs. 6700M and 7500M vs. 6600M. (The 7400M vs. 6400M on the other hand looks to be no better.)Reply

Nonsense, ATI rebadged both R200 and R300 countless times and even around the 8800GT's prime they rebadged the R600 (2900) into the RV670 (HD 3870).

People put far too much emphasis on the unimportant peripheral details of a product (for whatever reasons) instead of the actual FPS and price and ultimately the value and relative performance of the product.Reply

You are incorrect Chizow. The RV670 was not the same piece of silicon as the R600. There were many differences, but the obvious ones were a different process (80HS versus 65) and a different memory interface (R600 was 512b...)Reply

No, the 8800GT to 9800GT to GTS250 were the exact same chip, just with some die shrinkage. The 3870 was a substantial departure from what the 2900 series was - the die shrink alone wasn't enough to justify the substantial reduction in die size. Cutting back the 512bit memory bus cut it down a HUGE amount, too. There were also several minor tweaks to the architecture to boot. There was more redundant parts of the GPU in the core, too. Read up a bit more on it at http://www.anandtech.com/show/2679 ...Reply

Yes the R600 to RV670 shrink cut down the internal ringbus and external bandwidth in half which accounted for ~30M fewer transistors but *FUNCTIONALLY* the part was identical and just a rebadge/shrink of R600.

Also, how can all the G92 variants be the "exact same chip" when you've already acknowledged a die shrink, not to mention the 8800/9800GT only had 112SP enabled where the 9800GTX/GTS 250 had the full 128SP enabled? You must have a different definition of "exact" i suppose. There's more differences between the products that I won't even bother getting into.

Again, its ironic that certain people are so willing to overlook the differences in ATI's rebadges so conveniently forgets the differences with Nvidia's rebadges while condemning them, which is again, why people shouldn't bother nitpicking over such trivial matters.

All that should matter to someone when buying is price, performance, and features and in all the cases of the various rabadges all 3 were just where they should've been relative to newer parts.Reply

I think this is why Apple doesn't list model numbers for this sort of thing for their laptops (both CPU and GPU, with the exception of the Intel HD 3000 for some reason - probably because it's so much better than the old Intel GPUs).

For better or for worse, all they list is the RAM available (which I think is silly, since it's not as big a factor as the average person thinks it is) and the relative performance to their other models.Reply

I stand corrected, they DO list the model number on the specs page... well, at least they don't bother with the ridiculous Intel CPU model number. It would be nice if they'd list turbo boost speeds though.Reply

It doesn't make much sense. Those who are up to speed on the product numbers mostly know what they actually mean (in this case, the same as 6000), and the average user has no relation to the product numbers at all.Reply

Laptop OEMs are already launching their 2012 products, and even though they don't have any new hardware to work with (versus whatever they launched 6 months ago), they need "newer" products. It's very similar to how car manufacturers operate.

So AMD and NVIDIA are obliging them, hence the rehash for the 7000M and 600M series. It doesn't really excuse this mess, but the customer gets what the customer wants.Reply

Laptop/netbook manufacturers want new models when the new versions of their laptops are made... sort of like the clothes with the spring-summer releases and autumn-winter collections.

They just want bullet points on pages, differentiating their new laptops from the old stock - they don't care if they're faster, better and they certainly don't care what company they order from so both companies are pressured into releasing something, anything, just to keep their contracts and move stuff.Reply

Actually, 500 series parts are substantially improved over the 400 series parts as they benefit from chip refinement and the addition of Nvidia's 3rd transistor type to lower power draw and heat. Performance doesn't change a ton, but they are certainly more different than anything we see the two companies announcing today.Reply

AMD and NV have been ripping consumers off with these same designs for quite some time, now. Instead of regularly bringing out new, higher performing, products that replace older models at the same price while greatly improving performance, they give us new incarnations of old tech. I understand the concept of binning, but they've been selling hobbled versions of their $600 flagship boards across the entire product line for so long now that it is just absolutely repugnant. I honestly hope and pray that Intel's upcoming integrated graphics parts are good enough (and they don't need to be much better) to light a fire under the stagnant, price-fixing, hegemons of the graphics industry.Reply

Ripping people off because they don't produce products on a time schedule and with a price that you approve of? That's ridiculous.

If the graphics industry is stagnant, it's because the market is shrinking. Most people are happy with their consoles or with console-level performance on their desktop. Fewer people are willing to pay more money to increase the resolution that they can run their game at when the difference in enjoyment of the game is negligeable.

Also the suggestion that Intel's integrated graphics are even *close* to being able to compete with any flagship product from AMD or NVidia is also ridiculous.

AMD already produces an integrated graphics solution that is far, far better than anything Intel can produce, and is likely to produce in the forseeable future; it's what's in the A-series of AMD CPU.Reply

That may be true, but rebadging parts is doing nothing to move the industry forward for either camp. Sad showing indeed. They didn't even move these parts to 28nm to try and reduce their power consumption. It would have been far better to cut the prices on current line-ups to bring more performance to the consumer at lower price levels, but no. The performance improvements in graphics industry on the mobile side seem to be getting worse and worse every new generation, while the transparency behind specs for those cards is also lacking. Reply

rumors about the 7000 series weren't talking about any rebadged parts. Amd hasn't released the 7000 series everyone is talking about yet. We're still going to see whether or not it's Bulldozer part II.Reply

You probably thought these Radeon 7000M GPU are new products by AMD. And these NVIDIA 600M are new? NOPE! No they’re not! They’re old! They have been bastardized by their developers in California, U.S.

Look how RAM is cheap and overproduced, we won't have notebooks with less than 4 GB. Nope! It’s just Chuck Testa.Oh no, non-TN panels are finally can be produced for reasonable price. It's probably hard to find monitors, TV and notebooks with crappy TN these days. Nope! Chuck Testa.Hold on a second, new SSD are probably better and more durable than old ones? Nope! It’s just Chuck Testa with another realistic mount.Call Chuck Testa for the most life like dead innovations around. Period.

Globalfoundries is currently several months behind TSMC in production, and it is to my understanding that the other fabs are even further behind TSMC. Only Intel is developing there factories faster than TSMC is.Reply

AMD seems to be on a fast track to stupidville.It's pointless and stupid to repackage the last years crap.Anyone who knows the difference can see this is stupid. So when the real 7000 series comes out... Now you have an older tech with a new name... The confusion isnt worth it AMD. Nvidia has been doing this from years. Why follow them? Same stupid crap like Firefox 8 or 9 whatever the frack browser it is that I no longer want to touch. Between ff 4.0 and 8.0 (4.4 really) Opera has had 4 releases that did more... 11.11 .50 .51 .52 and recently 11.60 which has not made the news like stupid ff "8".

Add this garbage to amd's new K Llano chips... Like as if anyone who knows what a K chip is, would be fooled by this naming trick from AMD. Llano isn't in the same game as i5 CPUs... Neither is the slightly faster and embarrassing FX chips.Reply

We're launching a GPU that will be running at... hmm, we aren't going to tell you.It will have memory bandwidth of... guess!

I know people are more interested in discussing that it's a re-badge, but really what is the point of having a launch with no specs at all.

If they didn't already have the parts on the shelves since they're the same as last gen, then this would be a textbook paper launch, but since they do, what do you call this, I mean other than dumb.Reply

The 6630m to 6770m has 480 shaders (vliw5) a die size of 118mm^2 (40nm) and it is effectively a 6670 that has been downclockedThe 6990m has 1120 shaders (vliw5) a die size of 255mm^2 (40nm) and it is effectively a 6870 that has been downclocked

You can easily find cheap sub 800 dollar notebooks with one of the 6630m to 6770m graphic card in there.

So assuming a die shrink of 40nm to 28nm (with perfect scaling, which I know is impossible) the6990m replacement will have a die size 125mm^2 or very similar to the current 6630m to 6770m.And while a perfect scaling is impossible, some of the 7000 series gpus will be vliw4 instead of vliw5. I am assuming the 6990m replacement will be vliw4, thus I believe it is likely to get 6990m performance in the 800 dollar range in the next 6 months or so.Reply

I recently ordered a Sandy Bridge build from newegg sans video card. I plan on using the integrated HD3000 graphics in the meantime and later drop in a 7000/Kepler GPU. I mostly use my computer for productivity and light general use, so the lack of a real video card isn't too agonizing...Bleh.

Still, I'd like some official news of the HD7970 and GTX680 top end cards.Reply

Hey I am right there with you. I don't really have time to build during the school semester so I am debating between either building over Christmas without a video card or delaying the whole build until after the spring semester. I can't decide! If the new cards are right around the corner I would build now, but people have been saying that since May! If they are delayed until March or later I might as well just wait.Reply

Seeing as how I no longer represent AMD, I think I can comment on this.

As the person responsible for AMD's graphics roadmap for many years, I know for a fact that neither company knows what the other does. You might read one of Anand's articles where I was interviewed. I believe I discussed this in passing in one of those articles. That isn't to say that I didn't make my best estimates for what I thought nV would do (and was right most of the time), I did. That rarely drove my decisions.

Doing what I thought we could do that would best address the market drove the decisions. We both use nearly identical technologies to build our products, and if we both do the best we can with those technologies, guess what the outcome is?